Description

The essays in Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design foreground the rhetorical functions of design artifacts. Rhetoric, normally understood as verbal or visual messages that have a tactical persuasive objective—a speech that wants to convince us to vote for someone, or an ad that tries to persuade us to buy a particular product—becomes in Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design the persuasive use of a broad set of meta-beliefs. Designed objects are particularly effective at this second level of persuasion because they offer audiences communicative data that reflect, and also orchestrate, a potentially broad array of cultural concerns. Persuasion entails both the aesthetic form and material composition of any object.

About the Editor

Leslie Atzmon is Professor of Graphic Design and Design History at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. She earned her MFA in graphic design from Eastern Michigan University, and her PhD in Design History from Middlesex University in London, England. Atzmon’s work includes visual projects as well as design historical research. She has published articles in the journals Design Issues and Visual Communication, and has most recently published two articles in the online version of Eye: magazine. Atzmon has presented her work at the Design History Society conference, the Design Research Society conference, the AIGA Design Education conference, the Modern Language Association conference, and the International Conference of Design Studies and Design History. Her principle areas of research interest are late nineteenth-century fantasy imagery, book history, and the history of typography. Atzmon was awarded a Kress Foundation Pre-Dissertation Travel Fellowship in the History of Art for the 2003-2004 academic year. She is a member of the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Artists) and the Design History Society.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Visual Rhetoric and the Special Eloquence of Design Artifacts
Leslie Atzmon

1 Visual Style and Forms of Science in the Cold War
Michael J. Golec

2 Collapse: The Erasure of Time, History, and Memory in the Urban Landscape of Northern Ireland
Kate Catterall